In a certain universally known business administration system (for example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-251508), in order to accomplish efficient management of business that is systematically conducted within an enterprise or between enterprises, the processing deadlines and document forms that are used are administered for individual work projects, and reports indicating that processing deadlines are growing near, instructions to begin work, document forms that are to be used in the work and the like are transmitted to the party that is responsible for the work. Furthermore, in this system, in cases where a series of work projects are successively performed by a plurality of persons, and there is a delay in the performance of preceding work projects, the parties responsible for the following work projects are notified of this.
Furthermore, another universally known business management system (for example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-331083) has a program module called a workflow definition module. This workflow definition module stores workflow definitions that indicate combinations of business processing modules corresponding to the series of processing procedures and contents of various business projects from the beginning to end of all business projects; a plurality of business processing modules are combined according to these workflow definitions, and instructions for the processing that is to be performed next are sent to individual input-output devices and terminals. The object of this system is to allow the completely automated performance of business projects with absolutely no need for work performed by human beings.
Business conducted by one enterprise or by a plurality of enterprises working in cooperation is performed by the mutual cooperation or association of a plurality of organizations and numerous employees included in the enterprises. Accordingly, in order to conduct business more efficiently and increase the productivity of the enterprises, it is important to make the mutual cooperation and association of a plurality of organizations and employees easier and more efficient. For this purpose, the appropriate control of business-related information, and especially business-related documents (for example, plans, specifications, circulating documents, accounting documents, design drawings, photographic images, recorded sound data, movie data, instructions and responses, reports and approvals, various other types of messages and the like), between organizations or between employees is essential. For example, if information with an appropriate content is provided at an appropriate time and by an appropriate method from appropriate organizations or persons to other appropriate organizations or persons, the association of these organizations or persons is facilitated and made more efficient, so that productivity is increased.
Furthermore, the scale, organization, environment and the like of enterprises are constantly changing, and with such changes, the business of enterprises also changes. In order to maintain a high productivity at all times, the manner of business support such as the above-mentioned information flow control must vary in a flexible manner in accordance with changes in business. Furthermore, business configurations also vary according to the enterprise involved. If a common business supporting system can be applied to different enterprises, the cost of introducing such a business supporting system can be kept low. In view of such facts, a configurable business supporting system is desired.
From such standpoints, Patent Reference 1 merely provides one improvement relating to only some information among business-related information, i.e., work project deadlines and document forms. The system described in Patent Reference 2 is a system in which specified business is performed in a completely automated manner; this system does not improve the cooperation or association of a plurality of organizations or persons. Furthermore, neither Patent Reference 1 nor Patent Reference 2 provides a configurable business supporting system.